The Republican Party this week issued its Pledge To America. The sub-title suggests that it is somehow a new governing agenda built on the priorities, principles, and values of our nation. It is neither new, nor founded on anything like America’s founding principles and values. It contains so many distortions and misrepresentations and half-truths that it is hard to decide where to start.
The Difficult Problem of the Unemployed
Unemployment in the US stood at 9.6 percent last month. That was considerably higher than expected when the fledgling Obama administration economic team projected in January 2009 that unemployment would go no higher than 8 percent. The number of underemployed in the US — defined as those unemployed plus those working part time but wanting full-time work — is even higher. Gallup polling estimates of underemployment have ranged between 18 and 20 percent throughout 2010.
Turning Out The Democratic Base
President Obama is ramping up into full campaign mode and betting he can increase the turnout of Democratic voters in November. He needs to energize some of the base of support he enjoyed in his 2008 election if Democrats are to avoid losing one or both houses of Congress in the up-coming mid-term elections. The surest indication of the president’s strategy is the way he has refused to cave on extending the Bush tax cuts, and is taking an increasingly populist, pro-middle class posture. His argument: why should the rich not go back to paying the same low tax rates they enjoyed during the prosperous Clinton years? And why not target any additional tax incentives, not to millionaires, but instead to small business in the form of tax credits, deductions, and access to capital for the purpose of creating new jobs here in the United States?
Honoring the American Worker
Summer’s end is traditionally marked by the arrival of Labor Day. This year, those of us who work for a living in the United States of America are increasingly uneasy about the direction of our country. For good reason. Over the last decade, stagnant incomes and economic instability have increasingly become a fact of life for more and more Americans. We have too much debt as a nation and as individuals. The Bush administration’s Great Recession officially began in December 2007 as Americans started losing jobs and homes at an alarming rate. By the summer of 2008, reckless risk taking by Wall Street put the pace of economic decline into overdrive. President Obama came into office in January 2009 to an economy that was still standing on the brink of collapse.
Remembering Martin Luther King, Jr.
When Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968, I was a twelve year old child, living just north of Harlem in New York City. The neighborhood we lived in was about half African-American, and a little less than half Latino (Puerto Rican, Dominican, Cuban). I knew what is was like to be a minority in those days. There were very few whites living where we did — my brother, sister and I were the only kids in our elementary school with blond hair.
Posted in American Politics, Philosophy, Religion
Tagged being American, brotherhood, civility, forgiveness, Martin Luther King
4 Comments
On Extending the Bush Tax Cuts
The politics of tax cuts is not as daunting as it may seem for the Obama administration. Tea party activists, along with conservative Republicans, are doubling down for the mid-term Congressional elections on the issues of federal spending and taxes. The most effective play for the Democrats here may well be a well-timed Obama administration reversal of policy to embrace the extension of all the Bush tax cuts. It makes good sense from both a political and policy perspective.
Do We Believe in Religious Freedom or Not?
It’s not clear how much of a chance President Obama took politically in asserting that “Muslims have the right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country.” He made this statement at a White House dinner celebrating the Muslim holy month of Ramadan yesterday, and the vast number of Americans would likely agree. The President went a step further in defending the right of Muslims to build a $100 million, 13-story, Islamic complex just a few blocks from ground zero. Polls suggest that a large majority of Americans oppose building the Islamic Center so close to ground zero.
The Lack of Civility
For my family, a week at the beach has become the vacation of choice. As our family vacation comes to a close this week in Myrtle Beach, SC, I have been wondering what it is that makes our time at the beach so special. We come as a family to the beach without any cares. Thrown in with hundreds of other families, everyone is here for similar reasons, mostly to relax and unwind. We come from all over the country, often from many lands around the globe. All are welcome and there is virtually no conflict between individuals of every race, religion, age, and background.
Steering to the Tax Cut Center
Well here we are looking at the prospects of a 1994 replay wherein the Democrats lose one or even both houses of Congress. Could it happen? Maybe. Smart money says the House of Representatives is more vulnerable than the Senate for the Democrats. The good news for President Obama is that 1994 was the best thing that happened to Bill Clinton along the way to a second term. During 1993 and 1994, the Democrats controlled Congress and gave President Clinton almost nothing in terms of legislation. During that two year period, the Democratic Congress shut down Clinton on health care and virtually all of his legislative agenda. The only exception was the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 that was passed by Congress in February 1993.
HealthCare.gov Goes Live
With the launch of the HealthCare.Gov website, the White House rolled out, in record time, the platform that will likely power the new health insurance exchanges promised in 2014. In the interim, HealthCare.Gov will provide Americans with important new health insurance information, and starting October 1st, will showcase a pre-2014 exchange of sorts. HealthCare.Gov as currently rolled out provides some impressive first steps in making health insurance accessible to many of those currently uninsured.